agenda of unfinished work. we made some progress. there was a big to do list of things that still needed to be worked on. i'm not sure we're working on those things in the way we should and then there remain holes and then there is regulatory pushback. >> former federal reserve chair janet yellen and paul krugman talked about the 2008 financial crisis and current risks tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> this week on "q&a," sarah churchwell discusses her book behold, america. the entangled history of america first and the american dream.

brian: you start out your cknowledgment's by saying that this was not a book i planned to write. prof. churchwell: i actually was writing a book about henry james and then politics efforts happened. i think a lot of people have that reaction to the outcome of the 2016 election. for me, i had a very strong feeling that some of the ways that people were reacting to trump's rhetoric, in particular his use of the phrase america first in his campaign slogan in the way that was picked up, and his unusual use of the american dream, a much more familiar phrase, that's the stories that were coming out in the media and the commentary were inaccurate. they were distorted.

they didn't seem to be aware of a history i had especially countered. it seemed to me that those meetings were very alive in the kinds of ideas that trump and his advisers were putting forward. thought it was important to bring up the prehistory of these phrases back to the national conversation. brian: why have you been doing this research? prof. churchwell: i wrote a book about the great gatsby. i did a deep dive into the world of the 1920's, especially what f scott fitzgerald was encountering in new york. the way all this really began was we think of the great gatsby as the quintessential novel of the american dream. but a lot of people don't realize the phrase of the american dream was not a phrase when he was writing that book. fitzgerald was not familiar with that phrase. it did not become a catchphrase

until the 1930's. i was also in a tangential way looking into the history of the hrase. how it came to mean what it meant. something i found striking was that the book that popularized the phrase, nobody seems to notice that he used the phrase o mean the exact opposite. e said the american dream is not a dream of high wages and mort cars and big houses. not the dream of social mobility. it is a dream of higher aspirations. higher ideals. this founding ideals of the nation. one of the details that i like

the most from that book is that he says in 1931, his symbol of the american dream is the public library. the library of congress. the general reading room. he says that is the perfect symbol of the american dream. it is a space provided for the betterment of individuals, free and supported by the government. rich, poor, black, white, male, female. christian, jew. everybody is there to improve. he says that is the american dream. i think pretty few people would first think of a public library when i think of the american dream. rian: take us through your childhood in chicago to living in europe. >> i've been in london now for almost 20 years, which is

really hard to believe. i grew up watching bugs bunny and sometimes i say i took a wrong turn at albuquerque. i went to england as an academic. i studied english literature at princeton. that is where i did my phd. i have been gradually moving east from the chicago area where i grew up. i did all of my schooling in the new york area. hen took this job in england almost 20 years ago, thinking i would do it for a few years and come home again. but events overtook me. i learned that, and i was young enough that i did not understand it, i thought you could go have an experience, pack it in your back, and take it home with you like a souvenir. i did not understand the ways those experiences are ransformative. you're not the same person on the other side of them. that changes the way i look at america. i think i have this stereo view

now, to use an audio metaphor. this kind of insider/outsider perspective. hearing what people outside of the usa. knowing our own national myths of national values. they say travel is broadening. it certainly has been for me. brian: what is being director of the being human festivals like? prof. churchwell: it is a lot of fun. the festival is the uk's only festival of the humanities. we invite researchers from all over the united kingdom. any university and even independent researchers. to think of creative and celebratory ways to share with the public their research into any area of the humanities. it is there to showcase this area of research that people

think of as self-involved or a luxury, that does not have any real meaning in people's lives, any daily value, to show them how much humanities research is important. how much change their idea of heir identity. we try to bring that alive in a fun way. get the researchers off campus, out into the community. we encourage them to do simple things like pop quizzes, go into the cemetery and have a walking tour. creative things that get people read connected with the ideas behind humanities research. it's a lot of fun. brian: here is some videotape from january 20, 2017. let's watch. >> from this day forward, a new vision will govern our and.

from this day forward, it is going to be only america first. america first. brian: have you ever heard anybody say britain first? prof. churchwell: they are just starting to say it on the back of trump. there has become a britain first movement. i am happy to say it is not gaining very much traction. as your question implies, it does not really work the same way. when trump said he had a new vision to govern the country, that was very untrue. naccurate statement. not his first and not his last enaccurate statement. -- inaccurate statement. america first is not a good idea. does not a new vision. that is something i go into great detail in the book. the phrase does not even begin with charles lindbergh, as many eople said it.

t all but ended with lindberg. it actually began in 1915 when woodrow wilson urged america to stay out of the first world war. he campaigned on that slogan. so did harding. he tried to pass a permanent rotectionist tariff. it would have saved donald trutch the trouble if he would have passed it. think about that. in the name of america first. it was invoked to keep us out of the league of nations. from ratifying the treaty of versailles. there was this idea that we would be giving up our sovereignty to european overlords. there was this cabal of european elites and globalists who would want to take charge of america. that we needed to put america first. that isolationist strain and political protectionist strain of america first is a century

old. it was very associated with some other ideas that trumps advisers have thought to bring brack. the idea of economic nationalism. that was a phrase used around the america first debates during the treaty of versailles. they talked about economic nationalism. that is what steve bannon has said he believes in. that he was promoting with trump. these are very old ideas. they are not new at all. in many ways, trump and the gop are playing right out of the republican playbook of the 920's. brian: you said the sucker punch for those who thought this woman was more ready for he white house is that a female candidate did not even carry the female vote. a staggering 53% of white women voted against clinton and for

the man who brought misogyny kicking and screaming into the light. you obviously feel strongly. prof. churchwell: i have not hit my opinions about this. i think it's an advantage of being an academic and a historian and not a eporter. i think what you have to do is to allow your political passions of values and beliefs to be spoken explicitly. i'm not trying to hide where i came from. but you cannot let it skew your vision of the facts. and your presentation of the facts. you don't get to cherry pick your evidence. that is what being trained as a good historian and scholar is all about. that does not mean i don't have views on what those facts are. i do my utmost to be intellectually honest and tell the truth. brian: where do you vote? prof. churchwell: in the state of illinois. brian: how can you do that when

you have lived in 20 years for london? prof. churchwell: i have an absentee ballot. but for this election i went ome and voted early. this election in particular, i felt it was important. it was mostly symbolic but i wanted to physically cast my vote. brian: let's go back to august of 1944 some video of charles lindbergh talking about america first. >> in the past, we have dealt with a europe dominated by england and france. in the future, we may have to deal with a europe dominated by germany. we deserve to keep america out of war. we must take the lead and offering a plan for peace. that plan should be based upon the welfare of america. it should be backed by an impregnable system of defense. it should incorporate terms of

mutual advantage. ut it should not involve the internal affairs of europe. brian: why did so many people get upset about this? prof. churchwell: that was a rather benign version of some of what he said. if you listen to that out of context, does not seem particularly upsetting. it seems unfair and distorting. except for a couple of things. by that point, it was very lear, even in america, the which hitler e to was persecuting jews in particular but also communities. no one knew the extent of the atrocities, but they knew the camps were there. they knew there was terrible violence. americans were aware of the nazis doing very bad things. and lindbergh was aware. to suggest that we might have to deal with the germans is

already problematic for someone who does not want to support the persecution of entire communities. that is an appeasing idea. in other speeches, humidities -- he made his views more clear. he said in his first radio broadcast in 1939 but the conflict of europe was not a conflict of white races needing to band together to repel an asiatic intruder. he said if that were the case, america would need to come to the aid of the other white races to repel these nonwhite invaders. it is explicitly eugenicist. about who is supposed to be in charge. he said if we have to band together as the white races, then america should play its part. but he said, because it is just the battle between two white races rs england and germany,

then america should stay out of it. the implication being very strongly that it did not matter which white race was in charge, ven if it was the nazis. that is problematic. brian: have you decided to stay in europe forever? prof. churchwell: no i have not. i learned not to make plans about forever. certainly, as events have continued to shift around me, i'm even more reluctant to make plans about forever. brian: do you have a family? prof. churchwell: i have a husband. a british husband. when we got married, i said you have to be able to move to america. he was happy. however, i do not think he would want to live under the current government of the u.s.. he would be an immigrant.

it is a pretty hostile environment for immigrants, even the british. he doesn't want to be a part of that. he doesn't believe in what's happening. brian: you feel very strongly about what is going on in britain. i want to show you some video where you are talking about a man who is very prominent in the british political system. prof. churchwell: i also find it extraordinary that anybody finds his antics and buffoonery amusing. the comments he made about libya, a country mired in civil war, he said it has nice beaches that would be good to invest in once they cleared up the dead bodies. that is not a joke. it is not funny. it is not appropriate for a foreign of great britain to say. brian: boris johnson, you are talking about. >> i was talking about him.

>> why are you any happier over there? prof. churchwell: i am not. i'm not happy about what is going on there as well. for me it is not a binary. i did not leave america for political reasons. i was an economic migrant. went for a job. because of the way my career developed and i stayed and i married a brit. but i am angry about what is happening there to. these assaults on the basic tenets of democracy are happening there too. negotiations over brexit are very worrying. i don't know who is working out contingency plans. on march 29 when brexit happened, nobody has a real sense of where the british

economy will be. there is a very real possibility that the british economy will fall off a cliff. i know people who are trying to figure out where they have passports for other national eligibility. people are very worried about it indeed. for me it is the other way around. i became a dual citizen. i got british citizenship in the spring of 2016 so i could vote in the european referendum. i did not want to be disenfranchised of the place i had lived. i cannot actively vote on the things that were affecting me and my loved ones. i thought i would have all of these options. i got that wrong as well. i thought very much that sudden think two countries that i loved decided to jump off a cliff. brian: here is donald trump on he campaign trail.

mussolini eted a quote but not know who it was. "better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep." caller: it is a very good quote. a very interesting quote. know who said it. what difference does it ake? it is a certainly very interesting quote. > do you want to be associated with a fascist? >> no, i want to be associated with interesting quotes. brian: what are you hearing? prof. churchwell: the idea that it is an interesting quote but it is separate from being spoken by mussolini as part of a fascist platform, that is a disingenuous thing to say. i do not think he believes that for a second. of course he admires the strong-arm tactics of mussolini.

he clearly mimics him in many ays. i think he would strut around in jack boots if given the chance. that cult of personality. making jokes about being president for life. there are many reasons that he would admire and emulate mussolini. he is not stupid enough to walk straight up and say i am a fascist. i would support fascists values and ideologies. he knows he would get too much pushback for that. so he walks up to it but tries to dodge the bullet. brian: do you ever find anybody in your classes -- i assume you're still teaching? how much teaching are you doing and what is it that you teach? prof. churchwell: i do not teach much as well. ainly postgraduates. i work on fitzgerald with my

students in this context of the 1920's and 1930's and i do a lot of work with that with my students. brian: you find anybody in london who likes donald trump? prof. churchwell: no. he is all but universally reviled in the united kingdom. one or two people crop up on social media occasionally. i assume there must be a handful of people who admire hip. but no, he is absolutely, and not just by the liberal elite, he is widely reviled in the united kingdom. brian: so when you and your husband are talking about donald trump together and you both don't like anything about him, how do you work your anger out? [laughter] prof. churchwell: i worked mine out by writing a book. and going around and doing a ot of talks. the look came out in the u.k. in the spring. i have done talks around the country trying to get people to understand what these coded

statements are about. why i think trump presents such a danger. i think my husband is happy for me to be doing that on behalf of both of us. he was almost as upset by the outcome of the election. brian: what does he do? prof. churchwell: he is a businessman. brian: you have several people in your book that you help tell the story with. one of them is walter lippmann. dorothy thompson. f. scott fitzgerald. who was dorothy thompson? prof. churchwell: she is the hero of my book. he was a foreign correspondent , she was american, but she was in europe during the rise of fascism. she was the first american reported to interview hitler. she got kicked out of germany. she came home and had a syndicated column. her and lipman were the most

influential columnists of the day. by 1939, time magazine said she was the most influential woman in america after eleanor roosevelt. she is pretty much a forgotten figure now. she became the voice of anti-fascism in america. very much the voice warning that it could happen in the united states. brian: who are these people in this picture. prof. churchwell: that is dorothy thompson, her husband, the author sinclair lewis. that's their little boy. he wrote the novel it can't happen here. that novel was very influenced by her european circle. the debates in the arguments they were having and the concern over what was happening in europe. he wrote a novel provoked by huey long, the louisiana senator. it's was a vision of what

american fascism would look like. it is remarkable to read that book now in the context of trump because a lot of what lewis predicted is trump to a t. the voice sounds almost exactly like trump. brian: let's catch up with dorothy thompson first. >> the real issue between the foreign correspondents of the german government is the nature of journalists. the german government wants its own press. only to publish official news. news it's believes to be in support of the present regime. it seems to have the attitude that the foreign press should also share this point of view. brian: you said she was american. where did she get that accent? prof. churchwell: she grew up on the east coast and lived in abroad for a long time. she kind of sounds like katherine hepburn. she is talking about the freedom of the press.

the idea that a free press is almost another branch of overnment. a cornerstone of democratic freedom. germany was involved in a wholesale assault on the freedom of the press. that is part of a fascist regime. hey are only going to have a nationally approved press that would share propaganda and stories that are flattering to the current regime. and would suppress anything critical. that is why people are so orried about any kind of assault on the press in a democracy. like trump or sarah sanders calling the press the enemy of the people. that is a very fascist sick phrase. particularly for the president of the united states and for his press secretary to be using. reporters are not the enemy of the people.

it is a bulwark of american democracy. brian: how often has he actually done something to liminate speech? prof. churchwell: people are going to have different views about how fox news plays into this. the complexity of the american debate over whether there is a liberal bias to the mainstream media and that is being corrected by fox news. in my view that is very inaccurate and distorted. when you look at the mainstream media, they are always having conservative voices. explicitly conservative voices. they hire conservatives. to make sure they have conservative viewpoints. when is the last time fox news had a liberal on? fox news worries me. t does not make any attempts

to be objective or balanced. to be unbiased. their deliberate blurring of the boundaries between entertainment and news, that is always there excuse. that sean hannity is not pretending to be the news. it is entertainment. to be a little bit academic, i would point out that walter benjamin, who was a german jewish refugee and a great philosopher, he talks about fascism as the aestheticization of politics. making it a spectacle. entertaining. f you think about hitler's propaganda films of leni riefenstahl. fascism as this impressive spectacle. i think fox is moving in that direction. and trump letting fox tried his statements.

i find it very worrying. i think it is a bellwether for an assault on the press. brian: what is the difference between that and reading the new york times editorials everyday and believing everything you read there. following that, not this president, but another president who would be very much attuned to them or the "washington post"? prof. churchwell: the differences the washington post and the new york times have conservative voices. they are part of that conversation. they have those debates. they have brett stevens. they have ross douthat. david brooks. people who are making the conservative case. it is not clear to me that that liberal bias exists. that the truth has a liberal bias. people are doing their best to tell the truth. and on the other side they are not trying at all. brian: with billions of videos on youtube and abc, nbc, i can keep going.

why do so many people get upset about fox news? prof. churchwell: it is helping to create this. people talk about it as a bubble. an echo chamber where people are only hearing distorted versions of what is happening. i see it all the time on social media. i'm usually watching this from abroad. some big story will break. i will be able to think of an example of the top of my head. the new york times story about trump's inheritance being based on tax fraud. that was a big new york times story. huge investigative report. stood up on all kinds of ways. you see every contemporary media outlet leading with that story except fox news. they are telling you about the caravan. that is what i mean.

their unwillingness to be critical of trump. unwillingness to report anything thatmakes it look like a propaganda might be negative arm. a state agency. rather than a free and fair press. brian: but why do you care? in other words, there are all these other outlets second to the other side. cnn is now viewed as someone who is always banging on trump. as is msnbc while fox's always supporting him. with the viewership so low, they only have 2-3 million people watching. and you got 350 million people in the united states. >> the vote was also low. there was evidence that people were influenced by what was happening on tv. trump was good at sucking up the oxygen on tv.

that was one he got absolutely right. anytime hillary was try to give some earnest policy speech, the camera would go to trump and his carnival. he could say anything because it was outrageous and entertaining of people would atch it. brian: jeff zucker, who runs cnn, said that when we leave the trump story, our audience leaves us. so who is at fault? prof. churchwell: sure. i'm going to blame us too. les moonves said that trump is bad for america but that he is ood for cbs. in america, we have allowed our political coverage to be commercially driven. it has to have a competitive advantage.

you do not see that in any other liberal democracy. that's one of the great lessons for me, living in europe. in britain, they have outlawed negative campaigning. you cannot pay for television coverage. the state gives every party so there are all kinds of controls over what a political party is allowed to do. they do not have anything like citizens united. that is keeping all of that money and financial interests out of campaigns and out of the coverage of political campaigns. brian: how do you deal with all of this when you have a first amendment? prof. churchwell: that is the question. brian: no chance that will ever be changed. prof. churchwell: who knows. we did have a fairness doctrine. it said you did have to present both sides of an argument. there was supposed to be some attempt at objectivity.

the fcc passed that at the beginning of the laws in broadcasting. that was in place until reagan reversed it in the name of free speech saying the fairness doctrine was somehow against free speech. obama was asked about it and he said he had no intention to try to fight that particular battle. in that sense, i don't think it will be reversed but that is not to say it couldn't be and we used to have it. in the 1970's, the most trusted man in america was walter cronkite. the idea that today a journalist could have that kind of trust, that everybody knew he was doing his best, he did like it's everything right but people knew he was doing his best and people believed he was trying to be fair and just. now we have liberated everybody from that obligation. i find that really worrying.

brian: what would you think of a fairness doctrine was applied to bookwriting. to newspaper writing? prof. churchwell: it is applied to newspaper writing in the case of stories like a new york times story that i mentioned about trump's taxes. brian: how? prof. churchwell: mostly by the lawyers. they will make sure that everything they say is not defamatory or libelous. but also, good reporting. i don't have to tell you about good reporting. you stand up a story by making sure it is not just one view or opinion. you make sure that the facts are robust and you have gotten it right. brian: you write about citizen kane in the book. why? prof. churchwell: trump has said it is his favorite movie. we can assess that as we will. citizen kane was a movie that orson welles made specifically

as an anti-fascist, anti-american fascist story. he saw william randolph hearst as the newspaper magnate who spoke on behalf of america. he would put america all over his masthead. he was an ardent isolationist. he thought america needed to stay out of european affairs. he was the model for charles foster kane in citizen kane. wells was very worried about hearst's decision to meet with hitler's. he felt that hearst was a latent fascist. he made citizen kane as a satire is that kind of cult of personality. the way wealth can drive power politics. brian: piers is 34 seconds of citizen kane directed by orson welles. >> the next governor of the state. with one purpose only. to point out make public the downright villainy of political

political machines. now under complete control of the government of the state. my first official act as governor of the state will be to appoint a special district attorney to arrange for the indictment, prosecution, and conviction of boss geddes. brian: trump aside, people have said this greatest movie ever made in the united states. prof. churchwell: i think it is. i think it probably is. it has a lot of reasons for that claim. but it is worth remembering of how trump plays into it. that image you show is a perfect trump's stated admiration for citizen kane matters. that is how he presented himself when he accepted the nomination for the republicans. the way in which he wants to have people often as dear leader as the current

presidential incumbent who will be removed in eight years if not in for. that doesn't seem to be the way he wants to view things. brian: here is some footage from a german-american nazi rally in 1939 in madison square garden. >> i pledge allegiance to the s. , indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. brian: and your point of using this in the book? now. churchwell: two point --to point out that there was a very active american fascist movement. it was associated with the phrase america first. lindbergh did not create this. there was a long history. they had a lot of traction. the american nazi party had

20,000 supporters who came to the rally at madison square garden. that rally was for george washington's birthday. and there are people giving the nazi salute. the point is to make it clear that it can happen here. we have this tendency to think we are inoculated. somehow or our democracy is a special that we are immune to fascism. that is not the case. brian: this occurred after the memorial day parade when "riots in new york when the ku klux klan and american fascists clashed with onlookers in new york. seven men were arrested, one of whom was german-american fred c trump. c stood for christ."

why did you put this in here. prof. churchwell: there is a very open question about what trump knows of this history. we know he is not a big reader. he has also talked about how much he admires his father and how much his father influenced his thinking. says his father taught him to believe in gene theory. which is to say, and you can look at the interviews, there dozens that he has given over the years that he believes when superior people meet, they produce superior people. that is a eugenicist view. that is the worldview that was very pleasant in the 1920's in america. fred trump was arrested with five self identified klansman. the klan had marched as part of the memorial day parade. there were 20,000 onlookers were mostly therefore benign reasons. the clan had controversially

been allowed to march. and then am riot took out. the police in queens made six arrests. five of them were card-carrying, self identified klansman. that is a remarkable coincidence. his later record in race relations would not suggest that he was there to protest the clan. while we can't say he was a card-carrying klansman, there is no evidence i am aware of. i think it is fair to say that he grew up in a world where this was commonplace and this was a worldview. this eugenicist view of america first. that i white protestant man was somehow more american than people who are not like that. that other people were less american. i certainly think donald trump inherited that worldview. brian: did you find any reason by his middle name was christ?

prof. churchwell: it was more common than we might think at the time. that was maybe an unfair dig, but i could not resist it. i do think that trump's narcissism is so blatant and so disabling. it is messianic. the way he comes in and says only he could save america. only he could reverse the economy. that ita and i thought just cap making me think of donald as well. brian: when you were growing up, what kind of family did you have an winnetka, illinois. prof. churchwell: my parents divorced when i was very small. but they still stayed in the same town. so i was one of those lucky children of divorce who had a father who was still very active in my upbringing. my sister and i grew up with my mother but were only a few blocks from my father who remarried. brian: what did they do for a living?

prof. churchwell: my mother did all kinds of things. and my father was a lawyer who became a businessman. brian: at what point did you develop your strong views? prof. churchwell: good question. i have become more politicized as an adult than i was as a young person. as a young person, i was very caught up in books. i was happy living in the world of imagination and literature. my political convictions were always there. i was raised in a household that taught me these values and that they are fundamentally american. i believe in liberal democracy to my core. but i was not as able to fight for those rights as i have been as an adult. brian: why did you write a book on marilyn monroe? prof. churchwell: it came out of my phd thesis. i got interested. i ended up with a crusading spirit.

all of my books have always had a crusading spirit in some aspect. i became aware as i was reading of these biographies of her that there were these consistent lies that were being told. i had this feeling that i wanted to be the truth teller. a debunker. to say this is what we need to understand. to understand about the ways in which cultural myths can be in ways we are not aware of. in retrospect, i realize that all three of my major books have been about the american dream. i have been writing about it all along. i only became countess of that with this one. brian: you say this was a significant moment in donald trump's life. we have shown this several times. i want to get your take on it. this was back in at the white house correspondents dinner. >> we all know about your credentials.

for example, just recently in an episode of celebrity apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from omaha steaks. there was a lot of blame to go around. but you, mr. trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. so ultimately you didn't blame littlejohn or meatloaf. you fired gary busey. these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night. brian: many people have said that was the moment he decided to run for president. do you think that is true? prof. churchwell: i think there is a good chance there was that. i cannot be inside his head. and i do not want to be. there is a very real possibility.

it is worth noting that it was soon after that he launched the birther conspiracy. the idea that obama was a illegitimate because he was not a real american. which goes back to these ideas of white nationalism. just recently he said he wants to go after the birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th amendment. this was a specific reversal that said that african-americans , that theymericans had fewer rights and didn't have access to full citizenship. that goes all the way back to the constitution. the idea that black people were 3/5 of the human. brian: i want to show a photograph. not pleasant to look at. but you write about it in the

book -- can watch? prof. churchwell: it is not pleasant to look out at all. -- look at at all. i have several photographs like that. i decided to include this after charlottesville. i was already writing this book. i was assuming a reader who knew how bad the kkk was. in my earliest drafts, i had just said that what was wrong with america first is that it was the slogan of the kkk in the 1920's. and then charlottesville happened. and we had a president who stood up and said there were many fine people on both sides of the protest. when one side was entirely made up of klansman and neo-nazis. i do not view those as fine people. the affinity is one that goes way back and is part of the history that i am telling here. i started to see on social media

people dismissing the kkk as not that bad. a few burning crosses, nobody is defending harassment and sang hangings in the woods are ok. how bad was it really? i wanted show very clearly and graphically how bad it was so we understand the violence we are talking about. we are talking about human beings who were burned alive in of 10000 andds 20,000 grinning white people until 1934. we are talking about torture, dismemberment. jesse washington who was lynched the fire for two hours before he was killed. we have to understand that these are atrocities. and they were done in the name of america first. in the name of being 100% american.

this white crowds in the forefront meant that you are allowed to do something like that to people who you declared to be less than 100% american. in my view, we are not out of that cycle of violence. i am among those people who thinks that that the summary execution of black people on the streets by police officers who are not held accountable is modern lynching. we are speaking not long after 11 jews were killed at a synagogue in pittsburgh. the greatest massacre of jews in american history on american soil. the violence is real and it is still happening. it is happening by proxies, but it always has. we have a tendency to believe our democracy will save us. that we are benign. we treat violence as if it is an

anomaly. i want to show how deep the history goes. brian: as a native hoosier, this is hard to read some of this stuff, because the pictures from indiana. you quote from a newspaper in indiana, that this photo was taken just a few minutes after two new grows who admitted killing a white woman and attacking white girl will hang from trees in the courthouse yard. they had been badly beaten, stabbed, and dragged against the cement walk, all of this picture shows. what stopped this? prof. churchwell: there were several things that finally grounded it to a halt. the kkk started to lose influence and power. brian: why? prof. churchwell: they had financial scandals, sexual scandals that helped bringing them down. they were actually infiltrating government. indiana had the highest concentration of klansmen in the 1920's.

illinois was right up there. i cannot one up you on that. people do not realize the extent to which it penetrated into the midwest, the extent to which lynching was traveling up. there were lynchings in california and oregon. the klein boasted that they had mayors from portland, oregon, to portland, maine. but had political influence that started the wane because they had scandals. then the crash happened and people could not afford the $10 you had to pay to be a klansmen. and they did not have the spare time. there was this sense that the targets of violence were shifting. the naacp was getting more active. started to crack down.

roosevelt got involved and the federal government. more than two hundred anti-lynching bills were put on the floor of congress in the first half of the century and not one of them passed. itselfs could not bring to say that lynching should be a crime. brian: i want to read this quote from your book to ask you why you put it in their what it means. senator beveridge says, "i am a nationalist. i am opposed to the league of nations. i am a nationalist by birth, by conviction, by thought and , for prudential reasons. why? when this country was established, it was a homogenous nation. we are not such a nation now. none outweighing the other. we are not people as the french are. or the italians.

until the racial lines are wiped out and until we become homogenous in blood and purpose, we cannot become the greatest nation possible. a distinctive race in the world not america first in italy , second. america first and french second and america first and germany second, but america only should be our slogan." prof. churchwell: i put that in there because the idea that america was once a homogenous nation racially that this wonderful bygone state should be recovered is totally untrue. america was never racially homogenous. there was the genocide of native americans. there was the small matter of the fact that we had forcibly imported black people from , anda from the beginning miscegenation happened from the beginning. this idea that we were ever racially homogenous his fancy. it is also a dangerous one.

i think that speech is important because we are hearing very similar lines being taken now, it is a eugenicist argument. that we need to have it purification of the racial pool. that is a very aryan idea. hit there would've been -- hitler's would have been perfectly happy with that. hitler got his ideas for his race laws from our race laws. the problem is now we have people prepared to use violence to bring about something that is impossible. you cannot have racial purity. if it ever existed, and it didn't, but if it had come it is gone. you cannot reverse biological -- dominant genes work the way they work. you are not going to do this unless you are prepared to wipe out entire populations of people. that is the implication.

that is why people are talking about this being fascism. it is the slippery slope to actual genocide, the alt-right trying to remove people you see as tainted, not enough, not the right kind of people who keep your nation from being a fantasy of homogenous blood. they will use violence to try to bring about this fantasy. brian: you sound like you are not so sure that you ever want to come back to this country. prof. churchwell: that is not true at all. i am trying to show that this is always there. we fight before and we need to fight it again. if you love america, you do not walk away from it. i am not ceding this country to these people. i will not give it to them. i believe profoundly in the ideals of our nation. we never lived up to them. but that does not make the

ideals bad. it means people have ever been good enough to make them real. it is the striving to create a more perfect union. to try to protect liberty and justice for all. i believe totally in those. i'm not walking it away and giving it to these guys. donald trump cannot have my country. brian: but you do not live here for 20 years. prof. churchwell: that was an accidental profession. if i felt that my moving back here would actively turn the tide, i would do it in a heartbeat. brian: would you come back and run for office? prof. churchwell: i don't think so. i think my skills are used that in other ways and i am far too outspoken to be probably a very effective political candidate. i don't think everybody needs to run for office. shoulders all put our to the wheel in different ways. brian: is living in britain a better deal than living in the u.s.? prof. churchwell: that is a good question. i don't know. i have done it for different reasons.

i've done it because i like the career i have established their. there. i'm not sure i could have done it here. brian: why not? prof. churchwell: because what american and could the media wants and needs its professors to do is different. there is more room for being a -- having a presence on television as a commentator and writing for the guardian and newspaper and the financial times. that has developed for me there and it is not clear to me i could have something similar here. brian: one last question. "the hold,is book "behold, america." who named it? prof. churchwell: it is my editor who came up with using the phrase. but the phrase comes from one of the earliest iterations of the american dream.

it was a commemorative service in honor of ulysses s. grant. it is a speech that show the american dream was being used at that time to describe those older founding ideals. those ideals of self-government, opportunity for all, of a set of aspirations. that is what the american dream means to me, not free market capitalism. i was struggling to find a title for this book because it is about ideas. it wasn't obvious how to do that. it is my editor who said what "behold, america?" here is this history. she is actually an american as well. we thought there was a very nice pun there. it works in two ways. it is both -- look at america in different ways. have ofd the image you

those rallies. you have an american flag next to a nazi flag. so you are beholding and america you have not seen before. is a statement to look at yourself and behold america. look at this story. brian: our guest has been sarah churchwell. the book is behold, america. the we thank you very much. entangled history of america first and the american dream. prof. churchwell: thank you. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments on this program, visit us at q&a.org. they are also available at his c-span podcast.

jenkins talks about the truck era. >> here is a look at what is live on the c-span networks. in a few moments, causing comments unwashe "washington journal." at noon, the u.s. special representative for syrian engagement joins a discussion on u.s. policy toward syria. at 11:00 a.m., executives from mastercard, microsoft, and exxon mobil talk about cyber security threats against small and medium-sized businesses. at 12:15 p.m., the state of

global commerce and the senate at 3:00 p.m. this week on the communicators, federal communications commission chair on key issues before the sec and what he foresees in the future, including 5g and spectrum sales that allow 5g innovation. showingmplementation is america superiority. there are three parts to it. get a more spectrum into the commercial marketplace and we are doing that. the 24 gigahertz option will start. take a hurt spectrum bands next year. gigahertz spectrum bands next year. the expansion of wi-fi. we finished walls earlier this year.

the second part is wireless infrastructure. networks in the future will look for a much unlike the 4g networks we are accustomed to today. we will see small cells that are inconspicuous and operate at lower power. we want more wireless infrastructure. deployment. this is a critical part of 5g, getting the wireline infrastructure in place to carry it into the core of the networks. if we get those components right, america will win the race to 5g. watch 8:00 eastern on c-span two. -- morning, karen mills looks at ways to bolster small business in the u.s.. and on your money se